On 4 September, this year, The House of Representatives has stated it's intent to reconvene early, in order to take up the "gun violence" question and pass laws regarding it. It just so happens, coincidentally, that also on 4 September, I'm going to find myself with far too much time on my hands... but I digress.

So far, the stated intent is to pass laws involving more stringent background checks, to pass laws banning "high capacity" magazines, laws to prevent people who are convicted of MISDEMEANOR "hate crimes" from buying guns, and a bill to incentivize "red flag laws" in the individual states.

Some days later, they plan to convene to address the "assault weapon" issue separately. Here's a hint: the Second Amendment was designed SPECIFICALLY to protect "weapons of war" in citizen hands. Confiscation of them is what got America started as an independent nation, free from British rule, to begin with.

The British Monarchy did much the same to America a couple hundred years ago. There is an article about it on the internet here
a few excerpts from that article:

Quote:Import ban on firearms and gunpowder

1774-75 confiscation of firearms and gunpowder
...

"It was these events that changed a situation of political tension into a shooting war."
...

"Before dawn on September 1, 1774, 260 of Gage's Redcoats sailed up the Mystic River and seized hundreds of barrels of powder from the Charlestown powder house."

That was the 18th century equivalent of banning "high capacity ammunition feeding devices". If you can't feed your gun, all you have is an expensive paperweight.

To continue:

Quote:"Governor Gage directed the Redcoats to begin general, warrantless searches for arms and ammunition. According to the Boston Gazette, of all General Gage's offenses, "what most irritated the People" was "seizing their Arms and Ammunition.""
...

Oct 19, 1774 "King George III and his ministers blocked importation of arms and ammunition to America. Read literally, the order merely required a permit to export arms or ammunition from Great Britain to America. In practice, no permits were granted."
...

"Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was masterminding the surreptitious import of arms and ammunition from the Netherlands, France, and Spain."
...

"The British government was not, in a purely formal sense, attempting to abolish the Americans' common law right of self-defense. Yet in practice, that was precisely what the British were attempting. First, by disarming the Americans, the British were attempting to make the practical exercise of the right of personal self-defense much more difficult. Second, and more fundamentally, the Americans made no distinction between self-defense against a lone criminal or against a criminal government. To the Americans, and to their British Whig ancestors, the right of self-defense necessarily implied the right of armed self-defense against tyranny."
...

"The American War of Independence began on April 19, 1775, when 700 Redcoats under the command of Major John Pitcairn left Boston to seize American arms at Lexington and Concord."
...

(The powder had been moved for safe-keeping. - Ninurta)
...

"When the British began to withdraw back to Boston, things got much worse for them. Armed Americans were swarming in from nearby towns. They would soon outnumber the British 2:1. Although some of the Americans cohered in militia units, a great many fought on their own, taking sniper positions wherever opportunity presented itself. Only British reinforcements dispatched from Boston saved the British expedition from annihilation--and the fact that the Americans started running out of ammunition and gun powder."
...

21 April 1775 - "in Virginia, royal authorities confiscated 20 barrels of gunpowder from the public magazine in Williamsburg and destroyed the public firearms there by removing their firing mechanisms. In response to complaints, manifested most visibly by the mustering of a large independent militia led by Patrick Henry, Governor Dunmore delivered a legal note promising to pay restitution."
...

"The government in London dispatched more troops and three more generals to America: William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne. The generals arrived on May 25, 1775, with orders from Lord Dartmouth to seize all arms in public armories, or which had been "secretly collected together for the purpose of aiding Rebellions.""
...

"At the June 17 Battle of Bunker Hill, the militia held its ground against the British regulars and inflicted heavy casualties, until they ran out of gunpowder and were finally driven back. (Had Gage not confiscated the gunpowder from the Charleston Powder House the previous September, the Battle of Bunker Hill probably would have resulted in an outright defeat of the British.)"
...

"On June 19, Gage renewed his demand that the Bostonians surrender their arms, and he declared that anyone found in possession of arms would be deemed guilty of treason."
...

"On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, written by Thomas Jefferson and the great Pennsylvania lawyer John Dickinson. Among the grievances were General Gage's efforts to disarm the people of Lexington, Concord, and Boston."
...

"As the war went on, the British always remembered that without gun control, they could never control America. In 1777, with British victory seeming likely, Colonial Undersecretary William Knox drafted a plan entitled "What Is Fit to Be Done with America?" To ensure that there would be no future rebellions, "[t]he Militia Laws should be repealed and none suffered to be re-enacted, & the Arms of all the People should be taken away, . . . nor should any Foundery or manufactuary of Arms, Gunpowder, or Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without Licence . . . .""
...

"To the Americans of the Revolution and the Founding Era, the theory of some late-20th Century courts that the Second Amendment is a "collective right" and not an "individual right" might have seemed incomprehensible. The Americans owned guns individually, in their homes. They owned guns collectively, in their town armories and powder houses. They would not allow the British to confiscate their individual arms, nor their collective arms; and when the British tried to do both, the Revolution began. The Americans used their individual arms and their collective arms to fight against the confiscation of any arms. Americans fought to provide themselves a government that would never perpetrate the abuses that had provoked the Revolution."

And yet here we are...

Quote:"Laws disarming people who have proven themselves to be a particular threat to public safety are not implicated by the 1774-76 experience. In contrast, laws that aim to disarm the public at large are precisely what turned a political argument into the American Revolution."

So we see what the historical record has to say about what happens in America when disarmament is instituted. As the article points out, going at least as far back as ancient Carthage, disarmament is a precursor to wholesale slaughter - the Romans insisted the Carthaginians surrender their weapons, and when they did, the Romans started taking Carthaginians right out of the equation. Word War II, and the Nazi disarmament of their victims, just shows that it doesn't change much. Pol Pot did the same thing in Cambodia. Stalin did the same in the Soviet Union. In every case, the people who were disarmed were slaughtered and enslaved... by their own governments.

That lesson is not lost on Americans.

Now, all of the proposed measures have been put into effect before in America, individually, with no net decrease in street violence. It is for that reason that I am convinced this is NOT an effort to "make America safer". "High capacity" (really STANDARD capacity) magazines have been outlawed before, with no effect. Ditto "assault weapons". Misdemeanors banning people from buying guns has also already been done - never mind the long-standing principle that America only yanks citizenship from felons - now another class of misdemeanor will disenfranchise them as well, and a really nebulous class at that!

What is a "misdemeanor hate crime"? What is a HATE crime? doesn't that imply there is such a thing as a "love crime"? Who LOVES their victim? ALL crimes are "hate crimes"! There is some serious potential for abuse in this and the "red flag" laws proposed, and that is EXACTLY what the left is hoping for. Suppose the crack-head (or Leftist - same thing) down the street decides to rob me? All they have to do is report me for a "misdemeanor hate crime" that they made up on the fly, or accuse me of being "unstable", and WHOOSH - in comes the government to disarm me... then the bastards have free reign (or at least think they do) to run roughshod over me with impunity. Not gonna happen on my watch.

Kristen Gillebrand has come up with a hare-brained scheme to "buy back" guns. That hasn't worked out very well in it's various attempts at implementation here, either. Who, in their right mind, is going to sell away their means of defense? That idea, like the "high capacity" magazine ban, would have to have more teeth than they had before... meaning "mandatory" prefaced before the criminal "legislation", and / or confiscation, and barring "grandfathering" for items already in circulation.

And that is where "resolve" comes into the picture.

I'm not advocating outright rebellion. that often ends poorly, especially in totalitarian states as the American Left would have us become. What I advocate, at least initially, is non-compliance. As Nancy Reagan famously said, just say "no". Don't willingly give your means of defense up - it is insanity to do so. Their only choice then is to come to YOU to take what is yours, to confiscate YOUR rightful property.

And THAT is where the war starts. Make them pay dearly for everything they take - money is not enough. Anyone, ANYONE AT ALL, entering your premises to take what is not theirs is a "home invader", a common thief, and should be treated as such. There are 300 million guns in America, and many billions of rounds of ammunition. There are not enough people in America to take them all if their owners and operators draw the line.

Attention leftists and their minions: you will never, EVER, disarm me. You will never, EVER take away my means of defending myself as long as I still draw breath. It's a sad day when you make yourself the enemy that I must defend against. Sad for you, and sad for me as well. The only way you can disarm me is to kill me, and I promise it will not be a good day for you and many of yours when you come to do it. I will not "go quietly into that good night". It will be a sad day for the both of us, because I am sure to die as well, but I have my children and grand children to think of, and the world they will have to inhabit. I am expendable. I always have been. they are not, and the one thing I am still willing to die for is their future. It's the only thing I've ever been willing to die for, and it still is. I just have a lot less left to lose now in that fight. My best days are gone, and I'm ready to leave this plane whenever you are.

Remember the powder I mentioned above that was spirited away for safekeeping at Lexington and Concord? The powder that Pitcairn never got to seize, because it wasn't there when he got there? Yeah. it would do you well to remember that. I know where there are entire buses and connex containers of arms, ammunition, explosives, and various ordnance buried around the US. I'm not the only one who knows where they are. Once you've got me killed, your troubles will have only begun. Just like that powder came back to bite the Redcoats in the ass, so will those cached stores of ordinance come back to bite YOU in the ass. Hard.

I am no danger to you until you make yourself a danger to me and mine. When you do, I solemnly promise that I will suddenly become far more dangerous than you can even begin to imagine. Mere guns are just the beginning of it.

There are many, many more like me.

So come get you some.

.

" I don't mind killin' a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight... or if there's money involved... or a woman... "

Even though I represent the British on this website, I have to begrudgingly endorse Ninurta's
conclusions!! If the 'Yanks' had given-up their guns back then, we-Limeys would be in the
White House right now!
That's how control over people works.

It's not the guns that cause harm, it's the ones pulling the trigger that cause the problem.
If uncertain, look at London's current chaos. It's not the knives that are magically moving
around and causing the mayhem, it's the lack of self-standards that are responsible.

Crime will always adhere to using such action and any sane person knows this.

If an intruder isn't climbing in through your window at night, you have no reason to
locate your firearm in defence. Any reasonably-minded politician knows this.

A gun can't terrorise a household. A gun can't grab a person for nefarious reasons and a guncan't visit a school to wreak horror on the pupils. Anyone with a sense of morality knows this
too.

Not wanting to harm each other in a civilised environment is the real dilemma, the weapon to
do so is truly immaterial.